Mismatch Unemployment and the Geography of Job Search

Ioana Marinescu and Roland Rathelot

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2018, vol. 10, issue 3, 42-70

Abstract: Could we significantly reduce US unemployment by helping job seekers move closer to jobs? Using data from the leading employment board CareerBuilder.com, we show that, indeed, workers dislike applying to distant jobs: job seekers are 35 percent less likely to apply to a job 10 miles (mi.) away from their zip code of residence. However, because job seekers are close enough to vacancies on average, this distaste for distance is fairly inconsequential: our search and matching model predicts that relocating job seekers to minimize unemployment would decrease unemployment by only 5.3 percent. Geographic mismatch is thus a minor driver of aggregate unemployment.

JEL-codes: E24 J41 J61 J63 J64 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mac.20160312
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (86)

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Working Paper: Mismatch Unemployment and the Geography of Job Search (2016)
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